The three, in one paragraph
All three are swings narrowing towards a point. They differ in which side does the narrowing.
Ascending triangle: a roughly flat ceiling with lows that keep rising into it. Descending triangle: a roughly flat floor with highs that keep falling onto it. Symmetrical triangle: both sides move in, falling highs and rising lows, with no flat side at all.
The first two carry a directional reading in most books — a flat ceiling with buyers arriving higher each time is read as pressure building upward. The third carries none, and that is not an oversight. A symmetrical triangle is classified by which side it leaves.
A ceiling near ₹78, and lows arriving higher
The dashed line is ₹78, this example's stated test. The fainter line runs through the rising lows.
Three touches on the ceiling and three rising lows. That is the minimum this page argues for, and it is more than most drawings have.
How many touches make a line
This is the question that decides whether a triangle exists, and it has an arithmetic answer that is rarely stated.
Any two points define a line exactly. Pick any two highs on any chart and a line through them is perfect by construction — it cannot fail to fit, so it confirms nothing. The line only starts carrying information at the third touch, which is the first one that could have missed.
So a triangle drawn from two highs and two lows is four points and two guaranteed fits. A triangle with three touches a side has been tested twice and survived. That is a real difference and it costs nothing to check — count the touches before you believe the lines.
And 07.02.02's problem arrives here too: the touches are never exactly on the line. How far off is still a touch? That tolerance is the dial 07.01.04 measured, where moving it from 2% to 5% nearly tripled how many patterns existed in an unchanged chart.
A line through two points is a fact about the pencil. A line through four is a fact about the chart.
The symmetrical triangle, and what its definition admits
Take the honest case. Falling highs, rising lows, no flat side. The narrowing is real and visible, and you can count the touches and satisfy yourself that both lines are earned.
Now ask what you know about direction. The highs are falling, which taken alone reads downward. The lows are rising, which taken alone reads upward. The pattern's two halves say opposite things, which is precisely why it has no directional name. It is a market becoming less sure, and the books say so.
What they then say is that it usually resolves in the direction of the prior trend, and this is where it becomes circular. The instance in front of you is called a continuation if it breaks with the trend and a reversal if it breaks against. So the classification is not something you apply to the chart — it is something the chart applies to itself, later.
That is not a scandal, and it is not hidden: it is what the definition says. It does mean a sentence like symmetrical triangles are continuation patterns about 70% of the time is reporting how often a shape that is named by its ending had one ending rather than the other.
| Name | The two boundaries | Nameable before the break? |
|---|---|---|
| Ascending | Flat ceiling, rising lows | Yes — the shape alone identifies it |
| Descending | Flat floor, falling highs | Yes — the shape alone identifies it |
| Symmetrical | Falling highs, rising lows | Yes as a shape, but continuation or reversal only afterwards |
The apex, and the deadline nobody enforces
The two lines meet. That point is the apex, and it is a genuine constraint rather than a piece of lore: at the apex the pattern has no width left, the boundaries are the same price, and there is nothing to break out of.
Books usually say a triangle should resolve somewhere between half and three-quarters of the way to the apex, and that one drifting to the tip has failed. The useful part of that is not the fraction — which is another unmeasured convention — but the deadline itself. A triangle has an expiry date built into its geometry, which almost no other chart pattern does.
The practical form is short. When you draw the two lines, note where they cross and how many sessions away it is. That number is checkable, it was fixed the moment you drew the lines, and it stops a narrowing range being called a live triangle for months.